Musical fruit or unsung hero? A beginner’s guide to cooking with beans
Long before becoming TikTok’s latest main character, food cultures around the world have been soaking and stewing beans to delicious effect. And yes, you can
Long before becoming TikTok’s latest main character, food cultures around the world have been soaking and stewing beans to delicious effect. And yes, you can tone down the side-effects For months, TikTok home cooks have been spilling the beans on the nutritional power of soaking and simmering pots of cannellini, borlotti and black beans.
There are more than 13,000 TikTok videos under the hashtag #beantok, with cooks claiming the humble legumes have alleviated their anxiety, perimenopause and inflammation. Pair that with “fibremaxxing”, and the bean has found itself recast from back-of-the-pantry afterthought to wellness main character.
But for many cooks and chefs, none of this is new. Beans are native to the Americas and arrived in Europe by the 16th century, but they were so readily adopted into Mediterranean cooking that it’s now hard to imagine those cuisines without them.
“The Tuscans are even known as ‘mangiafagioli’: bean eaters,” says food writer Emiko Davies, who points out that beans were once the everyday nutrition of a largely peasant population. Continue reading...
The BriefWire